Human Rights

When Aleppo resident Mariam Hammad’s internet connection went bust last October, her chest tightened with worry that she may not be able to continue her studies. Hammad is one of hundreds of Syrian students who are going to great lengths, amid shelling, hunger and brushes with death, to keep up with their university online.

A recent study has found that Mexico is home to nearly half of all children and adolescents who are employed in Latin America. The study found that 3.6 million Mexican children and adolescents between five and 17 years old are employed and that six out of every 10 children in Mexico are looking for an “informal but honest” way to survive.

Despite widespread opposition, Japan has passed a controversial counter-terrorism law that targets the planning stages of crimes. And you thought the Philip K. Dick book and movie Minority Report about a futuristic law enforcement agency of thought police was just science fiction!

Advocates for indigenous people in Ecuador have appealed to the government to pardon and release more than 177 activists and leaders who were arrested last month for participating in protests. Indigenous peoples face the highest levels of poverty in Ecuador, with little access to health care, justice or education.

In what appears to be reviving harsh practices of the former Burmese military dictatorship, police in Yangon, Myanmar arrested at least six people yesterday in the first major forced eviction of slum residents under Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government.

Peru’s minister for women has denounced the impunity that surrounds crimes of gender violence, which she says has placed the country among the world’s most dangerous places for women. The Peruvian government says Peru now ranks third worst in the world in its rate of gender-based violence, only behind Ethiopia and Bangladesh, as revealed in 2013 by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Brazil’s efforts to expand access to primary health care has led to dramatic reductions in health inequalities between racial groups, a new study contends. Brazil’s free primary healthcare system was launched in the 1990s with an emphasis on improving access to poor parts of the country. Black and pardo (mixed-race) populations in particular saw enormous increases in health care coverage, according to government statistics.

After posturing to withdraw for months, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley announced yesterday in Geneva that the U.S. will remain on the Human Rights Council for now – on conditions. Haley had two demands: Reform membership elections and address the council’s “chronic anti-Israel bias.”

Investors are withdrawing all funding from a controversial hydroelectric dam project in Honduras that had been accompanied by the murders of protesters. A number of local people who opposed the dam project at Agua Zarca dam on the Gualcarque river have been killed over the years – allegedly by state-sanctioned military death squads – including famed activist Berta Caceres.

As Kenyans prepare for presidential elections in August, the government is cracking down on journalists, according to a new report. Many fear that the country could see the same widespread violence that left 1,200 people dead after the 2007 election.

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Humanosphere

Seattle is the epicenter of a global effort to beat back poverty and illness in the poorest corners of the world. We'd like Humanosphere to be your go-to source for news, conversation and analysis about this effort as it unfolds. Your host is Tom Paulson, a reporter with decades of experience covering science, medicine and global health in the US and beyond.

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